CASUALTIES IN N.Z.E.F.

Southland Times, Issue 24655, 29 January 1942, Page 4

CASUALTIES IN N.Z.E.F.

CENSORSHIP ON PRIVATE CABLEGRAMS (P.A.) WELLINGTON, January 28. For the purpose of relieving any useless congestion on the cable services the Government has decided to refer to Base Records all private cable inquiries made to General Headquarters of the Second N.Z.E.F. The Minister of Defence (the Hon. F. Jones) stated today that the Government’s aim in doing this was threefold; namely, to ensure that only information which was official and authentic was disseminated, to ensure that such information was sent out without delay, and to obviate the expense of private cables and a congestion of the cable system. Mr Jones said it had been brought to his notice that a large number of private cables inquiring for particulars of casualties was being sent from New Zealand addressed either to individuals in the Second N.Z.E.F, or the Second N.Z.E.F. Headquarters. The Minister pointed out that private cables addressed to individual soldiers overseas inquiring for particulars of their casualties could not properly be answered overseas because it had been found that a great deal of inaccurate information had been conveyed in this manner and therefore a strict censorship on such messages had been imposed. It was also not the function of the Second N.Z.E.F. Headquarters to deal with private cables about particulars of individual casualties.

Relations and friends might rest assured, said the Minister, that their anxiety for particulars of casualties was fully recognized and shared by the Government and the system now devised was the result of the Government’s most painstaking and exhaustive consideration of the whole problem.